The aim of the research was to find out how fuel poor individuals can benefit from pay-as-you-save and feed-in energy tariff schemes, and was funded by the Scottish Power Energy People Trust.

A two-page version – Green deal & fuel poverty briefing LWM 2011 – is also available summarising our recommendations to help those involved in designing the green deal, responding to forthcoming related consultations, tariff reform etc.

These are exciting times as innovative finance mechanisms such as Feed-In Tariffs[1] and Pay-As-You-Save[2] are opening up unprecedented opportunities for low-carbon retrofit. Feed-in tariffs are payments to ordinary energy users for the renewable electricity they generate and pay-as-you save schemes are government finance initiatives that provide a loan so that households can install renewable energy technology with no upfront cost and immediately reduce their energy bills. Schemes such as Birmingham Energy Savers based on these are showing how to achieve a local multiplier effect through creating local jobs and keeping energy spend within the local economy.

Yet many people fear that Feed-In Tariffs and Pay-As-You-Save schemes will mainly benefit the fuel rich, and will open up a new fuel poverty gap, with the poorest people being left behind by this low carbon revolution. The respected environmental campaigner, George Monbiot, for example, sparked a fierce public debate about the subject in the Guardian a while ago.

It is for these reasons that Localise West Midlands undertook this action research project to examine what barriers exist to the fuel poor benefitting from these schemes, and what action needs to be taken to address the barriers.

We examined the themes of:

debt/poverty

metering

bill payment

financial literacy

corporate social responsibility

social policy

hard-to-treat homes issues

regulatory issues.

This research should be of interest to many practitioners and decision makers in local government, energy and social policy in designing and managing Green Deal and similar schemes to provide at least proportionate benefits to the fuel poor.